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Council presents colourful bench to the winner of litter bug trails competition

The students of Didcot Primary Academy will be sitting pretty after the school was presented with a bright multi-coloured recycled plastic bench for their playground by Cllr Sue Cooper, South Oxfordshire District Council’s cabinet member for Environment, Climate Change and Nature Recovery.

Phoenix from Didcot Primary Academy is presented with the new bench by Cllr Sue Cooper

The top prize, worth £400, was given as part of the council’s successful Litter Bug Detectives Trail where the council’s waste team worked with 14 local parish and town councils to run children’s activity trails during the school summer holidays.

The trails were created for use by town and village councils and were available in August. They followed on from a successful scheme run by the council along with Vale of White Horse District Council in the school summer holidays last year.

The activities were aimed at primary school children and were produced to promote recycling and reuse messages and explaining the damage litter does to our environment.

The winner, Phoenix, completed the trail in Ladygrove and put her school, Didcot Primary School into the draw for the prize. There were 37 schools entered in total for the draw. As top prize winner Phoenix also won £20 worth of vouchers for herself.

Cllr Sue Cooper, South Oxfordshire District Council Cabinet Member for Environment, Climate Change and Nature Recovery said: “Judging from the feedback we’ve had from parents of those taking part, the trails were a great success again this year. Many said how much their children had enjoyed them, while also acknowledging the messages about waste and litter that we were trying to get across.

“We are very pleased as a council to be able to provide something so well received that is educational, fun and free for our residents and visitors.”

Notes to editors

The trails were created by South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Council’s waste team and run by town and parish councils which opted to take part. The trails were open to all, and all entries could request a certificate of completion of the trail. In total 89 certificates were requested and sent out.

If the participant’s school was in South Oxfordshire or Vale of White Horse districts, then they could also nominate their school to win a recycled plastic multi-coloured bench worth £400.

The trails were available at the following sites:

  • Abingdon Ock Path
  • Didcot Ladygrove
  • Drayton Millennium Green
  • East Hagbourne
  • Forest Hill with Shotover
  • Great Coxwell
  • Kennington
  • North Hinksey
  • St Helen Without
  • Thame
  • Uffington
  • Wallingford
  • Wootton and Old Boars Hill
  • Whitchurch on Thames

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